(Re)producing Ambiguity and Contradictions in Enduring and Looming Crisis in Burundi

This article explores how (young) people devise action in the context of ambiguity and uncertainty in the aftermath of war in Burundi. The focus is on purposeful action in different periods of crisis. In Burundi, enduring crisis has given way to a range of practices that are geared at embracing rather than ridding ambiguity and uncertainty – such as preparing for alternative trajectories simultaneously or acting in a provisional way. In situations where the threat of potential violence is immediate, in looming crisis, however, these practices cannot be sustained. People have to make explicit, exclusive choices within a matrix of contradictions. Therewith, recurrent crises in Burundi have given rise to patterns of practices that are experienced as problematic; desired (ought to be) moral maps for acting no longer correspond to the expected (more frequent) maps. This further adds to the experience of incoherence and ambiguity in the already uncertain society

‘Youth, farming and precarity in rural Burundi’

In this article we explore the precarity of rural youth livelihoods in the aftermath of war in eastern Burundi. Combining ideas from agrarian studies and youth studies, we argue that a generational approach helps to expose structural problems of reproduction in rural communities. In the aftermath of civil war, young men and women experience their livelihoods and preparations for independent householding as ‘lacking’. They are aware of the unsustainability of current practices of land inheritance and farming, and their concerns orient them to other livelihood possibilities. Their responses to difficulties in social reproduction vary. Formal (secondary) education and gender in particular affect strategies of circular migration and marriage, and expose young people to hardship and violence in different ways. However, in contrast to what is often assumed in studies of rural African youth, most young people do aspire to a farming future, at some time and under better conditions

Desistance onder zedendaders: Narratieven van mannen veroordeeld voor zedenmisdrijven tegen minderjarigen in België

This study analyses the narratives of 19 Belgian men convicted for sexual offenses against children, who, after being in custody, have returned to live in society. The theoretical vantage point is Maruna’s (2001) identity theory of desistance, in which narratives following a redemption script are seen as a way to reconcile past misdoings with the present conventional self. Rather than a redemption script however, the men interviewed in the current study seem to employ a ‘behavioral script’: a storyline in which identity and behavior are strictly separated, but which nevertheless recognizes a continuous risk for recidivism. We interpret this behavioral script as an attempt to facilitate re-integration in the community in the absence of a redemption narrative that can be convincingly told in the Belgian context by those who committed sexual offenses against children